Countdown to Judy

At last! Rufus Wainwright’s re-creation of Judy Garland’s 1961 show at Carnegie Hall is just around the corner, and what better way to conclude our countdown than by having a little chat with his mom? A renowned singer in her own right, Kate McGarrigle will accompany li’l Rufus on the piano when he performs “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Garland’s signature tune. “Rufus and I have been doing that song for a long time,” McGarrigle recalls. “It’s something we’ve been doing for generations now: When I was a small child there was a lot of singing around the house. My father played the piano, mostly standards—lots of Gershwin and Cole Porter, and some opera. Those songs were very familiar to me, but we didn’t have Judy Garland records. I don’t remember having records by anybody, actually. My father just knew the songs and my mother would know how to sing them. So consequently we did the same thing: I would play and the kids would sing the songs. Of course, it’s going to be different this time around, because there’s going to be a big orchestra.”

McGarrigle herself is used to Carnegie Hall by now: She’s performed there three times, including a Christmas show in December 2005 with her sister and regular performing companion, Anna, and her children Rufus and Martha. “You feel the mystique [of the venue],” she acknowledges, “but most of all you’re reminded of it by the people backstage. When we were doing the [Christmas] show, we had ideas for some decorations, maybe something like the shadow of a tree against the wall. Nothing huge. And they said, ‘Sorry, this is Carnegie Hall: You don’t need anything.’ That’s their attitude. We were trying to dress up as Dickens chimney sweeps, it was all over the place, and to be informal in a place like that can be hard. But sometimes it works in your favor because it is so formal and beautiful.”

Of course, formal and beautiful leads us straight to Viktor & Rolf. “I don’t know what I’m going to wear yet,” says McGarrigle, sounding resolutely unworried. “I sent them my measurements, which I took myself. I hope they turn up all right because you know how it goes when you have to put your foot on the tape measure and pull it up to your waist or the inside of the thigh.” She laughs. “I don’t think somebody at the piano should wear anything elaborate anyway—and I never wear anything elaborate. It reminds me of Wanda Landowska, a harpsichord player in the ’40s and ’50s, wearing a ball gown and a tiara on a cover. I find if you dress very elaborately and play an instrument, particularly if you’re a female, it looks like you’re working. And the idea of working in a ball gown…It’s difficult to make the whole package work together.”

Still, McGarrigle was rather unfazed when she first heard of the project. “I didn’t even know what show he was talking about—by 1961 I had already kind of gotten into Pete Seeger,” she says. “We were very into the Appalachian moutain stuff, people with no teeth playing banjo, stuff like that. That’s the side of America we liked, so Garland wasn’t even a blip on the screen. So I thought, Why are you wasting your time doing this? Why aren’t you doing a Rufus Wainwright evening? But when I heard him do a run-through with a trio, I realized just how beautiful the repertoire is: These are great, great songs.”—Elisabeth Vincentelli

· Week 1: Rufus Wainwright
· Week 2: Stephen Oremus
· Week 3: Jared Geller
· Week 4: Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoere
· Week 5: Rufus Wainwright
· Week 6: Phil Ramone
· Week 7: Kate McGarrigle